AGGRESSIVE DEFENSE IN MURDER CASE WINS CLIENT’S FREEDOM

Anyone can be a victim of injustice – even the son of a District Attorney.

This case involved the shooting of a man after panicked partygoers were running from the scene where two other people had just been murdered. The police theorized that the client, driving a vehicle away from the party, aided a passenger in his van fatally shoot a man out the window as the man ran by.

The preliminary hearing is called a probable cause hearing, meaning that the standard for the judge to send the case on for trial is a low one, as opposed to the proof beyond a reasonable doubt requirement in a jury trial. For this reason it is rare that the prosecution loses a case at preliminary hearing.

In this case Kirk McAllister went on the attack at the preliminary hearing, using law enforcement’s own evidence. He entered the crime scene diagrams prepared by the police into evidence. He questioned the witnesses using the crime scene photographs taken by the police. He called as a witness the state Department of Justice forensic firearms expert. Mr. McAllister brought forth evidence that a GSR (gunshot residue) test from swabs on the “victim’s” hands showed that in fact he was a shooter! The hearing which was expected to take 4 hours took 4 days. Kirk McAllister proved that it was impossible for the crime to have happened.

At the conclusion of the evidence on the fourth day the judge not only refused to hold the client to answer; he took the rare step of making a factual finding that the crime did not happen. The Judge ruled as follows. “So based on all that I make the following factual finding: That Mr. Logan did not fire a gun from the Morse vehicle while on Westside Boulevard the evening of March 30, 2013….Therefore Mr. Morse is not held to answer…. Mr. Morse is released from custody. He’s to be unshackled”

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